whining about Tumblr

I feel sick. I’m on vacation but I’m awake at 6am, flipping through my phone, clearing notifications and reading hours of twitter backlog and not only do I feel slightly pathetic for doing it but I don’t feel ready to handle any of it. At some point I made an offhand comment about Tumblr on Twitter (ugh, just even LOOK at how this sentence starts) and I guess some people read into my hyperbole as less than that and assumed I was making some dramatic statement about Tumblr because puts on my pretentious hat feelings about Tumblr from the thoughtful web really matter as we explore what happens to the company after it’s been acquired by one of the biggest web companies in the world and finally starts exploring its revenue stream potentials and

Yeah I can’t really do any more of that. The timing of my feelings about Tumblr are unfortunate because now my feelings are part of a movement and I don’t want them to be. I want my feelings to be mine. I want to be a person.

I’m not ready for the things I’ve written and wanted to last to be the property of a company that values its advertisers more than its employees. It was naïve of me to not put thought into where I wrote about projects that I poured my heart into. I’m sad but ultimately can’t blame anyone that a piece of the internet that at one time felt like it was a part of a culture that I identify with, one that makes things and is proud to share them with the world, is now a ‘platform’ for ‘brand awareness’.

I don’t have an ‘escape plan’ for Tumblr. I’ve migrated a handful of the posts that I feel proud of, ones that show off creative work that I’ve done, to a different platform. I still need to get the images from those posts downloaded and self-hosted before I can be “off” Tumblr as far as a writing platform goes. My blog’s been linked to, not a lot because I’m basically a nobody (and that’s ok), but a few times and I’m generally one who is loath to do something that knowingly breaks hyperlinks on the internet, so maybe I’ll leave stuff there instead of deleting it. Is there really any point in taking a stand like that anyway, I rationalize to myself.

When I look at it from the viewpoint of being on vacation and trying to clear my head and stop thinking about all of this stuff that ultimately ~doesn’t matter~ so that I can actually be at peace and enjoy myself for a week or so, I guess I feel like getting involved with Tumblr on any real level was a mistake. You can try to “follow the world’s creators” on Tumblr but this guy will be right here instead.